These all take us back not to the beginning, but to a time before beginnings.

And it is there that she discovers divine awareness, of the soul's love for the Beloved.

From the first instant time took a breath,Your love lay in the soul,A treasure in the secret chest in the heart.

Most seekers secretly fear that their yearning for the Divine is anemic, and so they drive themselves into extreme practices and Herculean efforts of prayer and meditation. Bibi Hayati's truth cuts through all that: When we dig into the core of awareness, we discover a love too immense to describe. That love is the "memory," the connection to the Eternal.

And that love-memory is primordial. It is not something that is built through actions and effort. It is not dependent on one's history. It exists "before there was a hint of civilization." It is the soul's very nature.

We don't have to train ourselves to that divine love, we simply uncover it within ourselves.

This then tells us the real purpose of spiritual practice: Not so much to develop qualities we lack, but to stop obstructing the soul's true nature, to uncover it and let it take wing.

Ultimately, we don't find God's shining face where it was not before, we discover that blissful radiance is always and has always been "forever present and beautiful."